Browsing Posts tagged Wisconsin Department of Health

Wisconsin Sex Ed: There’s an Elephant in the Room

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It’s become pretty challenging, trying to cut through the rhetoric, to understand what’s actually going on with the Wisconsin Sex Ed bill. At first glance, the political posturing and contradictions are bewildering—until you look at the raw data on teen pregnancy and STDs, and realize that everyone is tiptoeing around an elephant in the room.

Some of the Background:

In 2011, the new, now conservative legislature which was elected in Wisconsin in November 2010, has recently proposed a modification to the liberal sex ed bill, which would allow conservative communities to opt out of the most progressive requirements of the “old” 2010 sex ed bill (HYA), such as opting out of the condom demonstration in the classroom requirement. This proposal is called Senate Bill 237, or SB 237, or Strong Communities Healthy Kids Act or SCHKA

More details:

Conservative objections to HYA (now in use in Wisconsin):

1. HYA requires Sex Ed with a liberal and permissive spin or no sex ed at all:
If sex ed is taught, every community in Wisconsin must teach ALL elements of the curriculum outlined in HYA , including the demonstration of condom use in the classroom. Misleading phrases such as “medically accurate” and “age appropriate” are used in HYA to require the teaching of detailed explicit sexual practices and methods, including the practices previously considered by law, and still considered by numerous religions, to be deviant, unhealthy, risky, and damaging to society. continue reading…

about Syte

Syte Reitz grew up in Queens, New York, in a family of Lithuanian immigrants who fled Nazi and Soviet domination during World War II. Her education includes a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, and post-doctoral work at Princeton University. Syte left her job as an Assistant Professor at Oakland University, Michigan, to devote herself to raising her children, and ultimately homeschooled them through the end of high school. She is a member of Madison's Cathedral Parish.